One of the many things Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables has loved to say in the last year is you don’t know what you don’t know.

Nobody knew what to expect when Venables took over as OU head coach one year ago to this very night, but the expectations were high.

The hope was OU could just seamlessly transition from how Lincoln Riley ran the show to what Venables was going to try to instill with the program.

Just bypass all the hiccups and growing pains and go straight to the good fortune and fun days. Well, we all know that didn’t happen.

At least on the field.

The Sooners were only consistent about their inconsistency in the 2022 season, finishing at 6-6 overall and earning a berth in the Cheez-It Bowl vs. No. 13 Florida State (9-3) on Dec. 29 at Camping World Stadium in Orlando.

On the field, oh, there are questions. About the staff, about the players, about how Venables navigated tough coaching decisions in the heat of the moment.

Off the field? There’s a foundation being built. Sick of hearing about it? Then let the guys who have been in the trenches tell it.

“To me, if this was like a garden, like that's the watering,” senior defensive back Justin Broiles said. “When you walk through the garden downtown, they've got the sprinklers going. That's the sprinklers to us. If you walk in here, you can't not see best as a standard. And that's how you lay that foundation and you change the mindsets and you change the attitudes of this program.

“It's the underlying stuff. It's the underlying stuff that's not only going to make great football players but make great men, great husbands, great business owners. Whatever football has after, like that's the stuff that's going to carry over in life.”

That connects with Venables’ line of thinking. He hopes to coach an elite football team that has effort with technique and all those other terms. But it’s more important to him to help them grow as individuals off the field who will contribute to society.

Team 128 isn’t competing in the college football playoff. It didn’t vie for a Big 12 conference championship. The seeds are being planted, though. It just might take longer for them to sprout.

“It's not the year that I foresaw for us. None of us thought… we expected much, much greater for ourselves,” tight end Brayden Willis said. “But I will have pride and I do have pride knowing that I am the kind of start, that jumpstarted the Coach Venables era. And I haven't been able to kind of reap the fruits of my labor right now.

“But I know in the future, when they go and they win the title and the natty, I’ll know I had a hand in that and that I was kind of the start of that era. So, I take tremendous pride in finishing it the right way. To finish the season off and propel them into the next era.”

The excitement was at a fever pitch this night a year ago when Venables and his family walked off the plane with ‘Boomer Sooner’ sounding loud and strong.

It’s going a bit too far to say the excitement has worn off, but the last 12 months showed what a process this is going to be. One without any shortcuts because, as Venables says, you can’t cheat the game of football.

“If it was easy, everybody would do it,” wide receiver Marvin Mims said. “And at the end of the day, I mean, we went through it, we got adjusted to it. You know, we just got more years to build on it as far as Coach Venables is going to be here.

“I mean, at the end of the day, we're the first group to go through it. So I feel like there's a lot of learning that goes with the first group at the end of the day. I mean, we just got to keep building from here as a program.”

Despite the erratic and frustrating season on the field, it never felt like Venables lost the team. He stayed true to who he is, something the players recognized immediately.

Venables didn’t approach anything different when OU was 3-0 and being talked about as a college football playoff team or when his team was 5-5 and fighting for its bowl eligibility life.

Coaches, players said it alike. Venables never flinched. It wasn’t anything close to what OU fans wanted, but it might have been what was needed.

“I've just tried to continue to be me and not change through success or failure,” Venables said. “I've just always tried to take an even-keeled approach to all of it. And I think that's just, I have a humility, respect for you can be – it doesn't take much to be on the wrong side of it.

“And then there's a toughness aspect that I like to look at myself as tough. I'm tough-minded. I grew up in a tough way and I've had to earn, you know, what I've gotten. Nothing's been handed to me in any way in my opinion. And I'm convicted in certain things from a leadership standpoint and how you develop and have success.

“When you’re backed up against the wall, that’s when you rely on your convictions. Players will be like this wanting to know if you’re going to change this time. What are you gonna do in this team meeting today? Pre-practice, post-practice, guys are watching to see to how you’re acting and I would say they would say he’s remained exactly the same.”

How OU responds from here will say more than an uneven 2022 season ever could. Will that night at the Norman airport be a blip on the radar of OU football history? Or was it the night things got back on track?

Venables knows what he wants to do. He knows how he wants to do it. Year No. 1 had some rocky moments, but it’s time for that windshield mentality. It’s time to use 2022 struggles and turn them into 2023 prosperity.

It’s time for year No. 2.